The city of Torrance has barred a Shinto priest from performing a centuries-old ceremony as part of a program to promote Japanese arts at a new city-owned theater. The priest's opening blessing would "cross the boundary of church and state," the city attorney has determined. In response, a chief organizer says she has canceled plans for the priest's appearance at the showcase of Japanese performing arts scheduled for Jan. 10 and 11 at the new $13-million Torrance Cultural Arts Center.

Kendall Brown, professor of Asian art history at Cal State Long Beach and one of the experts to weigh in on the Storrier Stearns garden in Pasadena ( see related article ), has a book coming out this month. It's titled “Quiet Beauty: The Japanese Gardens of North America ,” and for this edited Q&A, we asked about his fascination with Japanese gardens, how best to experience them and why our notion of Japanese gardens is not entirely Japanese. What do you find most intriguing about Japanese gardens?

Determined to increase the amount of downtown housing to help reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, city officials Monday broke ground for South Park's third housing complex, a 192-unit apartment building at Olympic Boulevard and Hope Street. "For a long time, we have talked about building downtown Los Angeles into a 24-hour environment, and it is happening," Mayor Tom Bradley said.

The five-star view will remain the same, but lots of other changes are planned for Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo when it officially changes its name Jan. 1. The hotel has operated as the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Chinzanso for the last 20 years. Fujita Kanko, the property's owner, is investing $90 million to renovate Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo, which is known for its 16-acre Japanese botanical garden. Chinzanso means “villa on a mountain of camellias.” Among the upgrades are a new rooftop, meeting and event space, and Cafe Foresta, an open-kitchen-style restaurant specializing in sweets. "We possess a truly unique property, an urban resort in a lush garden setting," said Kouichi Urashima, the new general manager and a veteran hotelier.

Cross the pristine Isuzu River on a bridge made of bare cypress wood, walk down a broad pebble path through towering cryptomeria trees and behold the most sacred spot in the Japanese universe. Here, behind a tall gate and fence, housed in a simple thatch-roof shrine, is the ancient Yata mirror, the embodiment of the Sun Goddess. The mirror cannot be seen. Nor, for that matter, can very much of the main structure of the Grand Shrine of Ise.

Wearing the white silk robes of a high Shinto priest, Japan's Emperor Akihito communed Thursday night with his mythical ancestor, the Sun Goddess, in a torchlight enthronement ritual that was clouded by controversy over the constitutional separation of religion and state. The government-funded religious ceremony climaxed Akihito's elaborate rite of passage into emperorhood, which began nearly two years ago with the death of his father, Hirohito.

Torrance city officials have tentatively decided to allow portions of a Japanese ceremony to be performed at the city's Cultural Arts Center. The city earlier barred most of the ceremony, arguing that it was a Shinto religious ritual that would violate the constitutional separation of church and state to perform it in a city-owned building.

The choice of Wilfrid Sheed's journalistic romp through conservative Christian-bashing as the Christmas morning centerpiece of the Commentary page was unfortunate. The appropriateness of the selection aside, Sheed's article exemplifies the skewed perspective of so many who use the holiday season as an opportunity to take potshots at traditional Christianity. After excoriating conservative Christians, he recommends contemplating "doing better (with) . . . Confucianism with its great family values, or Shinto with its unparalleled work ethic."

Buried in antiquity, the origins of Tagata Shrine and its annual festival remain misty. But the reason for the festival's ever-growing popularity is clear. Indeed, it's so obvious that it's an embarrassment to much of Japan today. The Japan Travel Bureau, for example, distributes no material about the festival. Few guidebooks, except some written by foreigners, describe it. Only a handful of local newspapers publish photographs of it.

Here is a simple story of a child's love, an elementary philosophy, a chronicle so personal that it transcends the particular and encompasses universal experience. The search is for truth, love, answers. Such questions could hardly exist in a more chaotic milieu than the last days of World War II, in Kyoto, waiting for a bomb to drop or for the emperor to say that the time has come to die with honor, and there are horrible death whispers coming out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

C. SCOTT LITTLETON Anthropology professor at Occidental College C. Scott Littleton 77, a longtime Occidental College anthropology professor and department chairman known for his studies of comparative Indo-European mythology and folklore, Arthurian legends, Japanese culture and in particular the Shinto religion, and unidentified flying objects, died Nov. 25 in Pasadena, his family said. He had pneumonia and had recently undergone heart surgery.

Lanterns and flaming torches emerge from the darkness as a robed priestess walks below centuries-old pine trees. Rows of solemn priests follow her up a long stone staircase, carrying a cedar-wood box of purified offerings -- fish, rice, vegetables. Beyond the wooden gate at the starlit summit lies Japan's most sacred Shinto shrine, the inner sanctum of the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami, who legend says founded the world's oldest surviving imperial line thousands of years ago.

On the first day of the new year, the Rev. Alfred Tsuyuki was not nursing a hangover, cheering on college football teams or watching the dazzling array of floats in the Rose Parade like many of his fellow Southern Californians. Instead, he was purifying his flock at Konko Church of Los Angeles, using elements of an ancient Japanese ritual aimed at clearing out the negative energies of the past.

Hisashi Shinto, 92, the first president of Japanese telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., who was forced to resign over a bribery scandal in the late 1980s, died Sunday in Tokyo of pneumonia. Shinto studied shipbuilding at Kyushu Imperial University, and in 1972 became president of Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. He left in 1981 to head the government-run telephone utility NTT Public Corp. As president, he supervised its privatization.

The choice of Wilfrid Sheed's journalistic romp through conservative Christian-bashing as the Christmas morning centerpiece of the Commentary page was unfortunate. The appropriateness of the selection aside, Sheed's article exemplifies the skewed perspective of so many who use the holiday season as an opportunity to take potshots at traditional Christianity. After excoriating conservative Christians, he recommends contemplating "doing better (with) . . . Confucianism with its great family values, or Shinto with its unparalleled work ethic."

Yuko Higuchi recently quit her high-powered job at an international investment company to work for Kofuku-no-Kagaku, a fast-growing Japanese religion also known as the Institute for Research in Human Happiness. "I was interested in some sort of movement to improve the world," the 35-year-old Higuchi said, "but couldn't find a suitable one." In her view, Buddhism and Shinto--Japan's oldest religions--are spiritually exhausted. "Buddhist temples . . . are for sightseeing.

The five-star view will remain the same, but lots of other changes are planned for Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo when it officially changes its name Jan. 1. The hotel has operated as the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Chinzanso for the last 20 years. Fujita Kanko, the property's owner, is investing $90 million to renovate Hotel Chinzanso Tokyo, which is known for its 16-acre Japanese botanical garden. Chinzanso means “villa on a mountain of camellias.” Among the upgrades are a new rooftop, meeting and event space, and Cafe Foresta, an open-kitchen-style restaurant specializing in sweets. "We possess a truly unique property, an urban resort in a lush garden setting," said Kouichi Urashima, the new general manager and a veteran hotelier.

A court verdict allowing city governments to keep war monuments could lead to new problems for the Yasukuni Shrine here, a Shinto memorial to Japan's war dead including a number of war criminals from World War II, Japanese newspapers said Friday. The Osaka High Court on Thursday ruled that such city-funded shrines are not religious facilities and therefore do not violate the constitution's provisions on separation of church and state.

"ASK ME HER FAVORITE FOOD. GO AHEAD--ASK ME." PIGTAILS BOBBING, Aki Nakao can barely contain herself. Like teen-age girls throughout Japan, she has lapped up every inane detail about the life of Crown Princess-to-be Masako Owada that the press has generously dished out since January's announcement of the imperial engagement. Now Aki is eager to share her knowledge with foreigners visiting her high school English class in Kobe. "Sushi?"

Buried in antiquity, the origins of Tagata Shrine and its annual festival remain misty. But the reason for the festival's ever-growing popularity is clear. Indeed, it's so obvious that it's an embarrassment to much of Japan today. The Japan Travel Bureau, for example, distributes no material about the festival. Few guidebooks, except some written by foreigners, describe it. Only a handful of local newspapers publish photographs of it.